Development of a string-driven walking assist device powered by upper body muscles

摘要

The elderly sometimes fall owing to tripping caused by decreased dorsal flexion during the swing phase. A wearable assist device that was able to increase dorsal flexion to reduce the risk of tripping was proposed in this study. This device assists in dorsal flexion during the swing phase by transferring the tension force from the upper body to the foot by connecting them using strings. To improve the efficiency of the assist, the string path was optimized to maximize the assist torque at the time of minimum foot clearance (MFC). In this study, two string-path patterns were tested. Based on the walking experiment results, we confirmed that the wearable assist device that we developed successfully increased both the dorsal flexion and minimum foot clearance during the swing phase.